On the social side I don't mind paying a bit more taxes for welfare, food assistance and housing assistance for single mothers with kids and for old people. I do think the old people should be means tested to qualify for assistance. I'm happy to pay more for medical care for those kids (and their mothers) and older people too. What irks me is the guys who are young and able bodied who are receiving EBT cash, EBT food aid, public housing, utility aid, an Obama phone and are sitting at home in front of a big screen television with an x-box, a playstation and a nice blu-ray player and smoking pineapple kush while I pay a higher tax rate to support them. Alot of those guys aren't even trying to find work. Its wrong and it needs to stop. People who are 20-60 who are healthy should be required to work for the assistance they receive. There are unskilled workers needed on many of the infrastructure projects and something like the WPA could be established to connect those people with the work. I also think that entitlement recipients should be means tested. A guy with millions of dollars in cash and equity doesn't need a Social Security check. Instead of thinking of it as money that you paid into the system that you are owed it should be viewed as an insurance policy that pays out if you need it and doesn't pay out if you managed to be successful in life and accumulate wealth.
WRONG ON ALL POINTS! (You say you're not a DemoCrap, but your fiscal rhetoric is of one.) We already "tax the crap" out of the rich. Even with a flat/fair tax, the rich would pay 50%+ of the freight. The rich SHOULD be rich. It's not like they were the chosen few who won lottery to be rich. They DID something for it... and are rich IN SPITE OF PAYING ALL THE TAXES FOR THE COST OF GOVERNMENT. What's immoral about progressive income tax rates is (1) the unfairly tax much of the population... some much, MUCH too highly while taxing many too lowly, and (2) they hinder the, opportunity and potential for "have-nots" to become "haves".... even hinders their desire to try. Even Russia has a flat tax. FARKIN' RUSSIA! The Roman Empire fell because of too much spending... too big of a military trying to control too much area, spending on "bread and circuses" at home... same as America is doing right now.
The problem is out of control and obscenely excessive executive compensation. The rise in income inequality must correlate almost perfectly with the exponential rise in CEO compensation. The problem with using the tax code to address it is it punishes those who legitimatley eanred their money. I don't have a problem with a Steve Jobs making a zillion bucks. I do have a problem with corporate drones who manage to get the corner office and suddenly think they have won the lottery. Virtually all CEOs in the US are paid like they are absolutely essential to the business. Most could be replaced more than adequately by randomly picking people off the street. I don't know the answer, but the republicans desperately need to focus on the problem. Most people in this country were not susceptible to Obama's brand of hate the rich demagoguery, not until CEO pay became so astronomical, even as companies were outsourcing jobs and getting taxpayer bailouts.
The rise in executive compensation over the past 40 years has gone hand in hand with the enormous rise in retirement funds, IRA, pension funds, etc. Funds get into the stock market and these guys on the inside of the companies give themselves huge option packages. Its legal and open, but it is essentially a stealth wholesale transfer of wealth. The banks and investment industry have a lock on the capital in this country and they still wanted to take over social security. Q. Why, for example, can't I invest my IRA in my own privately held business? A. Because I can't lobby congress. Because they don't find an easy taxation option on a small businesses operating outside liquid public markets. It's crazy. The retirement wealth we can gather up over the years we are allowed to keep only in cash, bonds, or public securities, where the CEOs rape us. The owners of independent small businesses can't invest the money into the one area where they have absolute expertise and full trust: themselves.